What’s the difference between an internship and work experience? That question is continually being asked by students who seek to get their feet under the table at newspapers and magazines.

The supposed difference is that people who work as interns expect to be paid while those who get work experience placements - usually for no more than two weeks - accept that they will volunteer their services for free.

To confuse matters, some people call themselves interns while on work experience. And there is a further problem: how do we define work experience?

In common parlance, it is taken to mean that young people are enabled to get a feel for what it’s like to work. Does that involve watching someone else work or actually doing work? No wonder the lines are so blurred.

Graduate Fog, a website that offers careers advice to students and campaigns against exploitation, consistently monitors this situation and takes up complaints.

Its latest example is a case in point. A media graduate complained about Heat magazine offering “up to £10 a day expenses” for a two-week spell of work experience “assisting the fashion and beauty team in the fashion cupboard.”

It involved “looking after all clothing samples that come in and then need to be returned to various PR agencies.”

In addition, said the advert, “it can also involve finding pricing and stockist information for items being featured in the magazine, organzing [sic] the beauty cupboard, research for fashion and beauty features and lots of other varied tasks.”

The ad appears on the GoThinkBig website, which is run jointly by 02 and Bauer Media, the publisher of Heat. It prompted the complainant to remark: “It’s an absolute piss-take. It is blatantly just grunt work they don’t want to pay someone to do.”

So, is it really “work experience” or just work? And if it is work, shouldn’t it be paid? When Graduate Fog put those questions to GoThinkBig, it responded with two tweets, both of which copied in Heat’s Twitter account.

One said: “This work experience is a chance to learn from and shadow the team.” And other stated: “There’s no set responsibilities or required hours of work, but we do pay £10 expenses a day.”

Graduate Fog was unimpressed, arguing that it did amount to work, that the expenses were insufficient recompense and, therefore, the person should be paid the national minimum wage.

It continued: “Fashion internships are notoriously hard work, with fashion ‘workies’ often being expected to stay late to pack suitcases of clothing for colleagues’ trips to shoots in glamorous locations.”

I have to say that the advert’s description of what is required of a “volunteer” does not match the claim that the person will be a “shadow”. It sounds like work to me.

But I would guess, as a commenter to the Graduate Fog site remarked, it won’t deter people from applying. Media companies, arguably all companies, know there is a ready supply of eager graduates.

Update 4.10pm: “A spokesperson for Bauer Media said the company “has a number of initiatives... which aim to nurture the next generation of media talent. Work placements - in this instance two weeks with daily expenses - can lead to full-time, paid positions within our business and people go on achieve great success in their careers”.